Jamie Court on Gas Prices and Jonathan Landay on FEMA & Michael Brown

This week on CounterSpin: Is $4 a gallon gasoline the natural consequence of damage done by Hurricane Katrina? Where some see profiteering, many media analysts, like Newsweek‘s Robert Samuelson, see the market working exactly as it should. We’ll hear from Jamie Court of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights about what’s unnatural about price spikes at the pump.

Also on the program: Was now-ousted FEMA Chief Michael Brown really in charge of the emergency response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster? A September 14th report by the enterprising reporters with the Knight-Ridder news service says no, lending credence to suspicions that Brown might have been something of a scapegoat. We’ll talk to Knight-Ridder reporter Johnathan Landay about who was really in charge of the federal response to Katrina.